I Thought Global Warming Didn't Exist

[rollhead]

When Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, he questioned the science of "global warming." So, I wonder why the glaciers are melting? Any ideas?

Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 17, 2006; A01

Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday.

The new data come from satellite imagery and give fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data are mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.

The scientists said they do not yet understand the precise mechanism causing glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland were unambiguous -- and accelerating: In 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually.

"We are witnessing enormous changes, and it will take some time before we understand how it happened, although it is clearly a result of warming around the glaciers," said Eric Rignot, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Greenland study is the latest of several in recent months that have found evidence that rising temperatures are affecting not only Earth's ice sheets but also such things as plant and animal habitats, coral reefs' health, hurricane severity, droughts, and globe-girdling currents that drive regional climates.

The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are among the largest reservoirs of fresh water on Earth, and their fate is expected to be a major factor in determining how much the oceans will rise. Rignot and University of Kansas scientist Pannir Kanagaratnam, who published their findings yesterday in the journal Science, declined to guess how much the faster melting would raise sea levels but said current estimates of around 20 inches over the next century are probably too low.

While sea-level increases of a few feet may not sound like very much, they could have profound consequences on flood-prone countries such as Bangladesh and trigger severe weather around the world.

"The implications are global," said Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier expert at the University of Cambridge in England who reviewed the new paper for Science. "We are not talking about walking along the sea front on a nice summer day, we are talking of the worst storm settings, the biggest storm surges . . . you are upping the probability major storms will take place."

The study also highlights how seemingly small changes in temperature can have extensive effects. Where glaciers in Greenland were once traveling around four miles per year, they are now moving twice as fast. While it is possible that increased precipitation in northern Greenland is somehow compensating for the melting in the south, the scientists said that is unlikely.

There are multiple ways warming might be causing glaciers to accelerate. The scientists said increased temperatures may loosen the grip that glaciers have on underlying bedrock, or melt away floating shelves along the shore that can hold ice in place.

Whatever the mechanism, the phenomenon seems widespread. At a news conference organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual meeting in St. Louis, glacier scientists Vladimir Aizen from the University of Idaho and Gino Casassa of Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos said they were seeing the same thing happen to glaciers in the Himalayas and South America.

"Glaciers have retreated systematically and in an accelerated fashion in the last few decades," Casassa said. One glacier that provided Bolivia with its only ski slope five years ago has splintered into three and cannot be used for skiing, the scientist added.

Rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers also raises concerns for the large portion of humankind that gets its fresh water from glacier-fed rivers in South Asia, Aizen noted.

Most climate scientists believe a major cause for Earth's warming climate is increased emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of burning fossil fuels, largely in the United States and other wealthy, industrialized nations such as those of western Europe but increasingly in rapidly developing nations such as China and India as well. Carbon dioxide and several other gases trap the sun's heat and raise atmospheric temperature.

"This study underscores the need to take swift, meaningful actions at home and abroad to address climate change," said Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

The data highlight the lack of meaningful U.S. policy, she added: "This is the kind of study that should make people stay awake at night wondering what we're doing to the climate, how we're shaping the planet for future generations and, especially, what we can do about it."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[Brian Olewnick]

I'm not going to argue the point--for all I know the above may be entirely accurate. There's always been a general question I've had about this subject though and perhaps someone can enlighten me. Essentially, how do scientists distinguish between actions that may be caused by man-made activities and the natural fluctuation of atmospheric and terrestrial temperatures. In other words, there was a drastic reduction of glaciers some 11,000 years ago that (correct me if I'm wrong) dwarfs what we're seeing now. If that range of temperature fluctuation is possible, and it clearly is, how does one distinguish cause and effect in smaller variations? More recently (the 1700s?) there was a mini-Ice Age in Europe (I assume elsewhere too, though probably in much less populated areas). When that cold spell broke, pre-Industrial revolution, I take it that it involved melting of glaciers etc.

To be clear, I'm not saying that industrial emissions are not responsible, partly or otherwise, for what's going on in the last few decades, but I'd like to know the mechanism for separating out their effect from the natural ebb and flow of Earth temperature which, I hope it's needless to say, goes its merry way without regard for good or bad effects on humans.

[Brian Olewnick]

I'll try to put it more clearly: You have two graphs. One represents continued industrialization, however you'd like to measure it, and is on a pretty steady upward climb over time. The other represents temperature fluctuation and goes up and down in intervals that might look random over short times, trend up or down over longer periods (and maybe once again look random over millions of years).

If you pick a point during a temp upswing, you're automatically going to be at a point on the industrial graph that's at a high water mark as of that time. Now, there may in fact be an interdependence of the two but to state that as a determined fact from just these two sets of information would, it seems to me, be premature. Does this make sense?

[Gary Sisco]

There isn't any upswing of this duration in geological history of the planet, Brian. That's a simple fact.

The worst part of the situation is hardly ever expressed. That is, that the damage is cumulative over time. A lot of the damage being seen today is the result of industrial activity of the past, showing up increasingly in its cumulative form. They could stop all industrial activity today and the damage would continue to play itself out for decades to come.

This is one of those issues where people's ideology won't accept the plain writing on the wall. For me, if my ideology is contradicted by the objective facts in front of me, I consider it a failure of my ideology, not a failure of reality to conform with it.

There has never been a longer period of warming in all of geological history, most of which can be studied by its physical evidence in the planet itself (drilling ice cores from millenia ago and so forth and so on).

So, people are free to choose to recognize there's an elephant in their living room or to pretend it isn't there. That's the price of freedom.

But for me, the objective reality of the beast and its shit and piss on the floor is something less than deniable.

**********************

By the way, Murray Bookchin was already predicting this phenomenon and writing specifically about it in 1962, having the ability to use one of humanity's defining aspects (or used to be): speculative reason.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

There isn't any upswing of this duration in geological history of the planet, Brian. That's a simple fact.

Of 100 years? Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but the upswing after the last Ice Age had to last longer than that, no?

Here's another thing to possibly consider:

Let's say the situation is as stated in the article rollie posted. India and China are in the midst of embarking on massive industrialization with huge populations. Let's say they do their own forecasts and, while agreeing with the negative climatic effects that their industrialization will cause, come to the following conclusion: Even so, a) we're going to be overall in a better situation than we are now in absolute terms and b) we'll be in a far better situation with respect to our standing vis a vis the West.

Why wouldn't they proceed? Indeed, why shouldn't they proceed?

"third world" industrialization is one of the main reasons I'm pretty fatalistic on this front. I'm not sure there's anything we can do to curtail it and, really, I'm not sure we have any right to, regardless. One of the possible outcomes of increased warming that I've seen posited is the transformation of Siberia into a breadbasket, much to the benefit of China. If, in the process, the US is devastated, where's the net loss?

[Gary Sisco]

None, Brian, in duration or intensity. And it's more than a hundred years in any case (actually the industrial revolution's eventual use of coal -- it having been powered originally by water -- helped fend off what's known as the second Ice Age that had descended on much of Europe to the point of creating famine conditions because of shortened growing seasons) and the duration is not as important and the steepness of the warming curve, itself unprecedented in the physical evidence presented by the planet itself.

You're free to believe whatever you want, of course. People believe all kinds of shit. No amount of talk can do anything about that.

I don't think in bookkeeper's terms like you apparently do. "Net loss" and so forth. Nor do I think in terms of "averages" which are by definition constructed abstractions. No "average" has an objective existence.

I don't argue anymore with belief systems, though. You can't, really. It's pointless. I don't deal with "beliefs," in general, actually. I put a lot more stock in thought than belief or feeling.

The planet and it's climate in any case will do what they're going to do regardless of what anyone believes.

And, yes, things will deteriorate further and more rapidly as the formerly called Third World industrializes, particularly China and India. But that's the breaks. It's certainly not for the population of the rich countries who already take for granted the benefits of industrialization and modernity to deny them to others, now that the damage that is *also* a result of the same things has become apparent.

There is always the flip side.

[Jon Abbey]

Brian, at some point it becomes pretty obvious what's going on:

2005 was warmest year 'in thousands'

Posted: 15 Feb 2006

2005 was the warmest year recorded on Earth's surface, according to the US space agency agency NASA. Last year was slightly warmer than the previous peak year of 1998 and was unusually warm in the Arctic.
This means that five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

In descending order, the years with the highest global average annual temperatures were 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, NASA said in a statement.

"It's fair to say that it probably is the warmest since we have modern meteorological records," said Drew Shindell of the NASA institute in New York City.

"Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it's even fair to say that it's the warmest in the last several thousand years."

Some researchers had expected 1998 would be the hottest year on record, notably because a strong El Nino -- a warm-water pattern in the eastern Pacific -- boosted global temperatures.

But Shindell said last year was slightly warmer than 1998, taking into account indirect evidence from the Arctic, even without any extraordinary weather pattern. "That very anomalously warm year (1998) has become the norm," Shindell told reporters.

However, what's significant, regardless of whether 2005 is first or second warmest, is that global warmth has returned to about the level of 1998 without the help of an El Nino, NASA said.

The result indicates that a strong underlying warming trend is continuing. Global warming since the middle 1970s is now about 0.6 degrees Celsius (C) or about 1 degree Fahrenheit (F). Total warming in the past century is about 0.8° C or about 1.4° F.

"The five warmest years over the last century occurred in the last eight years," said James Hansen, director of NASA GISS. Over the past 30 years, Earth has warmed by 1.08 degrees F. Over the past 100 years, it has warmed by 1.44 degrees F.

Shindell, in line with the view held by most scientists, attributed the rise to emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and ozone, with the burning of fossil fuels being the primary source.

The 21st century could see global temperature increases of 6 to 10 degrees F, Shindell said.

"That will really bring us up to the warmest temperatures the world has experienced probably in the last million years," he said.

Source: NASA and Reuters

© People & the Planet 2000 - 2006

http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2667

[groover]

Originally Posted by rollhead

When Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, he question the science of "global warming." So, I wonder why the glaciers are melting? Any ideas?

The glacial melting is an obvious indicator of global warming. What's debatable is whether it's due to manmade emissions or part of a natural cycle. As for Bush questioning science... ... he's no Isaac Newton!

[Brian Olewnick]

Again, I'm not arguing that warming isn't occurring or even that it's not the warmest it's been in recorded history. As I tried to explain in my second post above, whenever a temp spike occurs, in modern times, its going to be at a "high point" of industrialization because the latter is, more or less, on a constant upward swing. So that by itself doesn't necessarily indicate anything. The same would occur if there was a downward temp spike.

And I do think "net loss" is pertinent in the argument here. We overwhelmingly argue these things from a Western perspective. It's worth stepping back and looking at it globally and assessing if, overall, the effects are likely to be good or bad in terms of greatest good for the greatest number. Might be sobering to Americans and Europeans. For all I know, 500 years from now, 95% of the Earth's population will have Indian or Chinese ancestry. There's no "good" or "bad" about it.

[groover]

If the sea level rises significantly, what are now coastal areas will disappear. What parts of the world have the most development and/or people living close to sea level?

Hint: tsunami.

[Gary Sisco]

I don't think of it from any "Western" viewpoint, as it's a scientific issue more than a politico-cultural one. The choices of what to do if anything are political but the issue itself is scientific and objective, regardless of politics.

I can't take on views like yours, Brian. What's happening 500 years out is outside my vantage, as 500 years past is outside my control. There's nothing saying there'll be humans at all 500 years out and certainly concepts like east and west will be viewed historically if at all.

And I certainly couldn't care less about the racial ancestry of humans, 500 years passed or 500 years from now. The only race I recognize is the human race.

What's lost and what's gained is always a subjective experience, as objective, general developments always have specific consequences for individual humans, and different specific consequences, depending on which human one's talking about and his or her objective situation in the world.

[moneyp]

Interesting reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

[Brian Olewnick]

mone, interesting stuff there.

Gary, check out the graph (tried to reproduce it here, but it's too huge). Look random enough to you over a long enough period? In fact, it doesn't really look random but appears periodic in 100,000-125,000 year cycles.

[Enforcer]

I think it's incredibly ironic that everyone complains about the weather being too cold but when we hear the news that the earth is getting warmer, everyone gets mad about it. Just today I saw threads about the cold weather and the cost of heating a home with natural gas, but everyone is whining about global warming. Look, cold weather is no joke. People die and get frost bite every year. I hate wearing coats and being cold, shivering all the time. I don't want to clean the ice off my car. If global warming can make these things go away, it's silly to fight something like that.

If bad things happen to the earth, I'm sure some places will stay safe and I'll just try to move to one of the safe places. People blow up these things like they're some huge deal when really there's nothing that big a deal about it.

[Scott Dolan]

If a Washington Post journalist said it, and rollie believes it, then it's as good as gospel to me.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Larry Nagel

I think it's incredibly ironic that everyone complains about the weather being too cold but when we hear the news that the earth is getting warmer, everyone gets mad about it. Just today I saw threads about the cold weather and the cost of heating a home with natural gas, but everyone is whining about global warming. Look, cold weather is no joke. People die and get frost bite every year. I hate wearing coats and being cold, shivering all the time. I don't want to clean the ice off my car. If global warming can make these things go away, it's silly to fight something like that.

If bad things happen to the earth, I'm sure some places will stay safe and I'll just try to move to one of the safe places. People blow up these things like they're some huge deal when really there's nothing that big a deal about it.

Obviously making a huge early push for Most Often Right 2007.

[Noj]

Sweetness! Lower heating bills.

[Scott Dolan]

Copyright infringer...........

[Noj]

Heh heh. :d

[Jon Abbey]

Brian O., 9/12/01:

"people are making such a big commotion about this. my take is that planes have been around long enough, with hundreds taking off and landing every day, that eventually one day three were going to hit the WTC and Pentagon on the same day. everyone is so quick to chalk this up to terrorists, but probability says that eventually this kind of thing was going to happen just through mechanical failure or sheer bad luck. everyone is always so quick to jump to conclusions."

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

If a Washington Post journalist said it, and rollie believes it, then it's as good as gospel to me.

Of course I don't believe it, Scotty... Bush says it isn't so, and he is our president.

[Brian Olewnick]

Man, I hope I didn't say that....you never know.

I do remember my first take was that some pilot had a heart attack or something (it was first reported as "a small plane", not an airliner) and that the second crash might've been some idiot news helicopter getting in too close....

anyway, after my Bicol Express, I might post some thoughts on short term chaos in long-term trends. Not necessarily having anything to do with the topic at hand but it's something that causes a lot of people conceptual problems, imho.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by rollhead

Of course I don't believe it, Scotty... Bush says it isn't so, and he is our president.

Geeeez.............

Stop playing with my emotions, you ogre!!

[rollhead]

I wanted to post a link to the Elizabeth Kolbert series on global warming that appeared in the New Yorker last year, but the magazine has taken the articles down -- Ignatius mentioned the stories in this column last month.

Is It Warm in Here?
We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, January 18, 2006; A17

One of the puzzles if you're in the news business is figuring out what's "news." The fate of your local football team certainly fits the definition. So does a plane crash or a brutal murder. But how about changes in the migratory patterns of butterflies?

Scientists believe that new habitats for butterflies are early effects of global climate change -- but that isn't news, by most people's measure. Neither is declining rainfall in the Amazon, or thinner ice in the Arctic. We can't see these changes in our personal lives, and in that sense, they are abstractions. So they don't grab us the way a plane crash would -- even though they may be harbingers of a catastrophe that could, quite literally, alter the fundamentals of life on the planet. And because they're not "news," the environmental changes don't prompt action, at least not in the United States.

What got me thinking about the recondite life rhythms of the planet, and not the 24-hour news cycle, was a recent conversation with a scientist named Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. When I first met Lovejoy nearly 20 years ago, he was trying to get journalists like me to pay attention to the changes in the climate and biological diversity of the Amazon. He is still trying, but he's beginning to wonder if it's too late.

Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.

"When do you wreck it as a system?" Lovejoy wonders. "It's like going up to the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is. Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but that's what we're doing with deforestation and climate change."

Lovejoy first went to the Amazon 40 years ago as a young scientist of 23. It was a boundless wilderness, the size of the continental United States, but at that time it had just 2 million people and one main road. He has returned more than a hundred times, assembling over the years a mental time-lapse photograph of how this forest primeval has been affected by man. The population has increased tenfold, and the wilderness is now laced with roads, new settlements and economic progress. The forest itself, impossibly rich and lush when Lovejoy first saw it, is changing.

For Lovejoy, who co-edited a pioneering 1992 book, "Global Warming and Biological Diversity," there is a deep sense of frustration. A crisis he and other scientists first sensed more than two decades ago is drifting toward us in what seems like slow motion, but fast enough that it may be impossible to mitigate the damage.

The best reporting of the non-news of climate change has come from Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker. Her three-part series last spring lucidly explained the harbingers of potential disaster: a shrinking of Arctic sea ice by 250 million acres since 1979; a thawing of the permafrost for what appears to be the first time in 120,000 years; a steady warming of Earth's surface temperature; changes in rainfall patterns that could presage severe droughts of the sort that destroyed ancient civilizations. This month she published a new piece, "Butterfly Lessons," that looked at how these delicate creatures are moving into new habitats as the planet warms. Her real point was that all life, from microorganisms to human beings, will have to adapt, and in ways that could be dangerous and destabilizing.

So many of the things that pass for news don't matter in any ultimate sense. But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are right, we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind. Kolbert concluded her series last year with this shattering thought: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing." She's right. The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.

davidignatius@washpost.com

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

I'm not going to argue the point--for all I know the above may be entirely accurate. There's always been a general question I've had about this subject though and perhaps someone can enlighten me. Essentially, how do scientists distinguish between actions that may be caused by man-made activities and the natural fluctuation of atmospheric and terrestrial temperatures. In other words, there was a drastic reduction of glaciers some 11,000 years ago that (correct me if I'm wrong) dwarfs what we're seeing now. If that range of temperature fluctuation is possible, and it clearly is, how does one distinguish cause and effect in smaller variations? More recently (the 1700s?) there was a mini-Ice Age in Europe (I assume elsewhere too, though probably in much less populated areas). When that cold spell broke, pre-Industrial revolution, I take it that it involved melting of glaciers etc.

To be clear, I'm not saying that industrial emissions are not responsible, partly or otherwise, for what's going on in the last few decades, but I'd like to know the mechanism for separating out their effect from the natural ebb and flow of Earth temperature which, I hope it's needless to say, goes its merry way without regard for good or bad effects on humans.

Brian,
Not wanting to put words in your mouth, I believe the question you are asking in a nut shell is: How do we identify, unambiguously that changes in climate are due to the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect (Global Warming)?

Well, ok I'll do my best here:

The various independent historical observational measurements conclude that the global average near-surface temperature has increased by about 0.5 degree centigrade over the past 100 years. This observed warming trend is continuing despite the influence of the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption, which caused volcanic emissions to reduce incoming solar radiation for nearly two years. The likelihood that this global warming is due to primarily to natural variability is low. Scientists believe that this global warming trend is resulted from the enhanced greenhouse effect. The notion of an "enhanced" greenhouse effect refers primarily to the incremental global warming caused by the exponentially increasing concentrations of anthropogenically introduced greenhouse gases over and above the greenhouse effect caused by naturally occurring greenhouse gases. Although there exist large uncertainties, scientists suggest that the emissions of greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols could, by the end of the next century, lead to an increase in global mean temperatures of about 1-4 degree centigrade.

One of the most important features of the global climate system is that it varies naturally on all time scales. Any climate change caused by human enhancing the greenhouse effect will take place on the top of the system which is already very variable. The question is how to identify unambiguously that changes in climate are due to the enhanced greenhouse. It is hoped that the types of climate changes induced by the enhanced greenhouse effect may produce a pattern of change -- a greenhouse "fingerprint" in the climate system that can only be adequately explained by the enhanced greenhouse effect.

Lets look a few Greenhouse Myths:

• "Ice caps are melting” -- A common myth is that sea level rises will be caused by melting polar icecaps.

The sea level rises predicted for the next 40 years will be caused by ocean water expanding as it warms and by some melting of non-polar ice.

• "Is it hotter now?" -- Another myth is that global warming predictions are based on extrapolations past temperature rises.

The forecast of future change do not depend on evidence from observations, but have been made on the basis of a primary understanding of the climate system and through the use of climate models.

• "Heat Islands" -- There have been claims that the measurements of global temperatures have been distorted by the "Urban Effect", with local temperature rises caused by urban development.

In practice, climatologists have carefully corrected the data to account for spurious effects, like the urban heat island effect. Furthermore, other records, such as middle tropospheric measurements, observations of maritime temperatures and a world-wide retreat of mountain glaciers.

• "Waiting for the next ice age to solve the greenhouse effect"

Typically, a order of 4 degrees centigrade change occurred over a period of about 1000 years during the ice age. The rate of temperature change resulting from the enhanced greenhouse effect is anticipated to be about 0.3 degrees centigrade per decade. "Those who are 'Waiting for the next ice age to solve the greenhouse effect', will have to wait a very long time!"

• "Missing sink" -- Of the estimated seven billion tons of carbon from human-generated carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere each year, about three billion tons stay there. We know the oceans take up about two billion tons. Where is the remainder going?

The remainder must also be going into the ocean or be taken up by living plants.

To make a long post short (I know, too late) or at least shorter
The enhanced greenhouse effect will result in significant chnages in local, regional, and global temperatures. Some climate models predict that the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases will result in significant increases in the global mean temperture. At or near the poles, glacial and surface ice and snow may begin to melt, raising the mean height of the world's oceans by the end of the next century. This will lead to flooding of many low-lying areas of the world presently occupied by hundreds of millions of people. Scientists are also concerned about the response of living systems, including humans, to temperture increases of up to 4 K over a period of only several decades. There are many questions and uncertainties about the impact of a global warming on our planet and its varied forms of life. A better understanding of these processes and couplings will help to better estimate the environmental, economic, and human health risks from an enhanced greenhouse effect.

Please understand, this only sctraches the surface, but I Damn it Jim, I'm a Veterinarian, not an Environmental Scientist!

[Scott Dolan]

Environmetal scientists are like Economists.

Or Yankees and Red Sox fans.

[Surfer]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Environmetal scientists are like Economists.

Or Yankees and Red Sox fans.

Royals fans are like podiatrists.



Jerry: Anyone can get into podiatry school. George got into podiatry school.

[Brian Olewnick]

Thanks, Doc (I was hoping you'd weigh in). I appreciate the explanations though I'm forced to think that some of them are imbalanced toward one side of the argument. for instance,

"The likelihood that this global warming is due to primarily to natural variability is low. Scientists believe that this global warming trend is resulted from the enhanced greenhouse effect."

Well, some scientists (maybe most) do, some don't. If you ascertain that every scientist on the opposite side is in the pockets of Big Oil, fine, that's a point to take note of. I'm guessing that's not the case, however.

"The rate of temperature change resulting from the enhanced greenhouse effect is anticipated to be about 0.3 degrees centigrade per decade."

Again, begging the question. "Is anticipated" implies a consensus of opinion that I don't believe is there across the board.

Once again, I'm not saying one side or the other is correct. It can argued that (if one thinks it's possible to actually take effective action--something else I'm dubious about) we need to do something now even if our data is incomplete. If it's leaning in one direction and the consequences are so drastic, we have to take action. That's a scary proposition, however, depending how drastic the action you propose is. Moreover, it's something where the results, if they actually occur, would be so long-term and so open to misinterpretation that it's very difficult to imagine the political will remaining constant through a long enough period to say, "yes or no" it worked or didn't work.

All this leaving aside the notion of getting India and China (and Mexico and Indonesia and Central Africa, etc.) to go along with anything which my predictive powers say is a fool's errand.

[Douglas]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Environmetal scientists are like Economists.

hmmm. I spent a couple of years working on sustainable development issues and I'd like to say that's not so. And I'm sure the environmental scientists would like to say the same.

Some of the science underpinning the estimates is very rough. My favourite is a model that derives an estimate of a trend from a single observation !!! This type of approach is not a bad thing, as it is the best that can be done with the available information. But it does open the way to very wide differnces in estimates of the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. For example, models that make long term projections suggest that average temperature could rise from around 1 to over 7 degrees centigrade. The upper estimates in the past have sometime struck me as policy-driven evidence, but as more information comes in perhaps it is being validated.

[Scott Dolan]

Obviously nobody got what I was saying. I meant that they are divided almost evenly into two distinct camps.

Some fir, some agin...............